The Physiology of Taste by Brillat Savarin (suggested reading .TXT) 📕

pine-apple juice, those delicious flavors which

spread through the whole system a luxury unknown to the profane.

 

We have not, however, reached the last term of progression of

pleasure.

 

LADIES.

 

There are times when our wives, sisters, and cousins are invited

to share in these amusements. At the appointed hour, light

carriages, prancing horses, etc., hearing ladies collect. The

toilette of the ladies is half military, and half coquette. The

professor will, if he be observant, catch a glimpse of things not

intended for his eye.

 

The door of the carriages will soon be opened, and a glimpse will

be had of pates de Perigord, the wonders of Strasburg, the

delicacies of d’Achard, and all that the best laboratories produce

that is transportable.

 

They have not forgotten foaming champagne, a fit ornament for the

hand of beauty. They sit on the grass—corks fly, all laugh, jest,

and are happy. Appetite, this emenation of heaven, gives to the

meal a vivacity foreign to the drawing-room, however well

decorated it may be.

 

All, however, must end; the oldest person present gives the

signal; all arise, men take their guns, and the ladies their hats-

-all go, and the ladies disappear until night.

 

I have hunted in the centre of France, and in the very depths of

the departments. I have seen at the resting places carriage loads

of women of radiant beauty, and others mounted on a modest ass,

such as composes the fortunes of the people of Montmorency. I have

seen them first laugh at the inconveniences of the mode of

transportation, and then spread on the lawn a turkey, with

transparent jelly, and a salad ready prepared. I have seen them

dance around a fire lighted for the occasion, and have

participated in the pleasures of this gypsy sport. I am sure so

much attraction with so little luxury is never met with elsewhere.

 

Les haltes de la chasse are a yet virgin subject which we have

only touched, we leave the subject to any one who pleases to take

a fancy to it.

 

MEDITATION XVI.

 

ON DIGESTION.

 

We never see what we eat, says an old adage, except what we

digest.

 

How few, however, know what digestion is, though it is a necessity

equalizing rich and poor, the shepherd and the king.

 

The majority of persons who, like M. Jourdan, talked prose without

knowing it, digest without knowing how; for them I make a popular

history of digestion, being satisfied that M. Jourdan was much

better satisfied when his master told him that he wrote prose. To

he fully acquainted with digestion, one must know hoth its

antecedents and consequents.

 

INGESTION.

 

Appetite, hunger, and thirst, warn us that the hody needs

restoration; pain, that universal monitor, never ceases to torment

us if we do not obey it.

 

Then comes eating and drinking which are ingestion, an operation

which begins as soon as the food is in the mouth, and enters the

oesophagus.

 

During its passage, through a space of a few inches much takes

place.

 

The teeth divide solid food, the glands which line the inside of

the mouth moisten it, the tongue mingles the food, presses it

against the palate so as to force out the juice, and then collects

the elements in the centre of the mouth, after which, resting on

the lower jaw, it lifts up the central portion forming a kind of

inclined plane to the lower portion of the mouth where they are

received by the pharynx, which itself contracting, forces them

into the oesophagus.

 

One mouthful having thus been treated, a second is managed in the

same way, and deglutition continues until appetite informs us that

it is time to stop. It is rarely, though, that it stops here, for

as it is one of the attributes of man to drink without thirst,

cooks have taught him to eat without hunger.

 

To ensure every particle of food reaching the stomach, two dangers

must be avoided.

 

It must not pass into the passage behind the nose, which luckily

is covered by a veil.

 

The second is that it must not enter the trachea. This is a

serious danger, for any particle passing into the trachea, would

cause a convulsive cough, which would last until it was expelled.

 

An admirable mechanism, however, closes the glottis while we

swallow, and we have a certain instinct which teaches us not to

breathe during deglutition. In general, therefore, we may say,

that in spite of this strange conformation, food passes easily

into the stomach, where the exercise of the will ceases, and

digestion begins.

 

DUTY OF THE STOMACH.

 

Digestion is a purely mechanical operation and the digestive

apparatus, may be considered as a winnowing mill, the effect of

which is, to extract all that is nutritious and to get rid of the

chaff.

 

The manner in which digestion is effcted has been so long a

question for argument, and persons have sought to ascertain if it

were effected by coction, fermentation, solution, chemical, or

vital action.

 

All of these modes have their influence, and the only error was

that many causes were sought to be attributed to one.

 

In fact food impregnated by all fluids which fill the mouth and

oesophagus, reaches the stomach where it is impregnated by the

gastric juices, which always fill it. It is then subjected for

several hours to a heat of 30 [degrees] Reaumer; it is mingled by

the organic motion of the stomach, which their presence excites.

They act on each other by the effect of this juxtaposition and

fermentation must take place. All that is nourishing ferments.

 

In consequence of all of these operations, chyle is elaborated and

spread over the food, which then passes the pylorus and enters the

intestines. Portion after portion succeeds until the stomach is

empty, thus evacuating itself as it was filled.

 

The pylorus is a kind of chamber between the stomach and the

intestines, so constructed that food once in it can ascend only

with great difficulty. This viscera is sometimes obstructed when

the sufferer, after long and intense agony, dies of hunger.

 

The next intestine beyond the pylorus is the duodenum. It is so

called because it is twelve fingers long.

 

When chyle reaches the duodenum, it receives a new elaboration by

being mingled with bile and the panchreatic juice. It loses the

grey color and acidity it previously possessed, becomes yellow and

commences to assume a stercoral odor, which increases as it

advances to the rectum. The various substances act reciprocally on

each other; there must, consequently, be many analagous gasses

produced.

 

The impulse which ejected chyle from the stomach, continues and

forces the food towards the lower intestines, there the chyle

separates itself and is absorbed by organs intended for the

purpose, whence it proceeds to the liver, to mingle with the

blood, which it revives, and thus repairs the losses of the vital

organs and of transpiration.

 

It is difficult to explain how chyle, which is a light and almost

insipid fluid, can be extracted from a mass, the color of which,

and the taste, are so deeply pronounced.

 

Be that as it may, the preparation of chyle appears to be the true

object of digestion, and as soon as it mingles with the

circulation, the individual becomes aware of a great increase of

physical power.

 

The digestion of fluids is less complicated than that of solids,

and can be explained in a few words.

 

The purely liquid portion is absorbed by the stomach, and thrown

into circulation; thence it is taken to the veins by the arteries

and filtered by urethras, [Footnote: These urethras are conduits

of the size of a pea, which start from the kidneys, and end at the

upper neck of the bladder.] which pass them as urine, to the

bladder.

 

When in this last receptacle, and though restrained by the

spinchter muscle, the urine remains there but a brief time; its

exciting nature causes a desire to avoid it, and soon voluntary

constriction emits it through canals, which common consent does

not permit us to name.

 

Digestion varies in the time it consumes, according to the

temperament of individuals. The mean time, however, is seven

hours, viz., three hours for the stomach, and the rest of the time

for the lower intestines.

 

From this expose which I have selected from the most reliable

authors, I have separated all anatomical rigidities, and

scientific abstractions. My readers will thence be able to judge

where the last meal they ate is: viz., during the first three

hours in the stomach, later in the intestinal canal, and after

seven hours, awaiting expulsion.

 

INFLUENCE OF DIGESTION.

 

Of all corporeal operations, digestion is the one which has the

closest connection with the moral condition of man.

 

This assertion should amaze no one; things cannot be otherwise.

 

The principles of physiology tells us that the soul is liable to

impressions only in proportion as the organs subjected to it have

relation to external objects, whence it follows that when these

organs are badly preserved, badly restored, or irritated, this

state of degradation exerts a necessary influence on sensations,

which are the intermediates of mental operations.

 

Thus the habitual manner in which digestion is performed or

affected, makes us either sad, gay, taciturn, gossiping morose or

melancholy, without our being able to doubt the fact, or to resist

it for a moment.

 

In this respect, humanity may be arranged under three categories;

the regular, the reserved, and the uncertain.

 

Each of the persons who belong to each of the series, not only

have similar dispositions, and propensities, but there is

something analagous and similar in the manner in which they

fulfill the mission from which chance during their lives has

separated them.

 

To exhibit an example, I will go into the vast field of

literature. I think men of letters frequently owe all their

characteristics to their peculiar mode of life. Comic poets must

be of one kind, tragic poets of another, and elegiac, of the

uncertain class. The most elegiac and the most comic are only

separated by a variety of digestive functions.

 

By an application of this principle to courage, when Prince Eugene

of Savoy, was doing the greatest injury to France, some one said,

“Ah, why can I not send him a pate de foie gras, three times a

week I would make him the greatest sluggard of Europe.”

 

“Let us hurry our men into action, while a little beef is left in

their bowels,” said an English general.

 

Digestion in the young is very often accompanied by a slight

chill, and in the old, by a great wish to sleep. In the first

case, nature extracts the coloric from the surface to use it in

its laboratory. In the second, the same power debilitated by age

cannot at once satisfy both digestion and the excitement of the

senses.

 

When digestion has just begun, it is dangerous to yield to a

disposition for mental work. One of the greatest causes of

mortality is, that some men after having dined, and perhaps too

well dined, can neither close their eyes nor their ears.

 

This observation contains a piece of advice, which should even

attract the most careless youth, usually attentive to nothing. It

should also arrest the attention of grown men, who forget nothing,

not even that time never pauses, and which is a penal law to those

on the wrong side of fifty.

 

Some persons are fretful while digestion is going on. At that

time, nothing should be suggested to and no favors asked of them.

 

Among these was marshal Augereau, who, during the first